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talkpoliticsWe've all heard about the scandal with the Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng who fled to the US embassy for a while, etc. But few have heard of another scandal, one with much deeper implications. That of Bo Xilai, who until recently was the charismatic darling of the media. Now he's being used to give a lesson to all Chinese leaders to keep in line, or else.
In the art of hospitality it's considered bad taste to ask your guest about their problems. It's the same in the art of diplomacy, especially if your guest has a thick wallet. So while the Chinese PM Wen Jiabao was touring Europe, no one asked him about the biggest scandal in China in recent times. In Germany and Sweden, Wen talked about investments and future partnerships, in Poland he met with the political elite of Central and Eastern Europe, and in my home country Iceland he visited a local sheep farm. How cute.
Ironically, the crisis-ridden Europe looks far more hospitable for the Chinese leaders than any place in Beijing. There the echo of the fall of the former top party apparatchik Bo Xilai still resounds and causes ripples through the seemingly smooth surface of Chinese politics.
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The public disgrace of Bo Xilai and those around him is probably the most shaking event in the Chinese elite since 1989. It began when his most trusted aide deserted him, Wang Lijun the chief of the police in Chongqing. He fled to the US consulate (how familiar! are the US diplomatic missions in China turning into sanctuaries now?) Eventually Bo Xilai was first removed from the leadership of the province, then from Politburo, and then he and his wife were arrested for the mysterious murder of a British businessman.
It's not the first time a powerful figure has been removed from a top post in China. The Beijing mayor was fired in 1995, that of Shanghai in 2006, etc. But this case is different. Bo was a rising star, the leader of a province of 30 million people, his father was among the top circles of the CCP (from the Mao era) and most importantly, he had charisma and popularity that brought him the nickname "the Chinese JFK". Unlike most Chinese politicians, he loved the media and they loved him. His policies of fighting social disparity and organized crime in Chongqing were exemplary. So the sudden downfall of such a major figure requires something more than a mere headline in some obscure press agency. This all looks like a cheap telenovela, rather than a political story. But it's true.
In the last months more and more reports kept coming up, claiming that his success against organized crime had come at the expense of absolute disregard for any human rights, many innocent people being dragged out of their homes and tortured by the police and forced to confess on various crimes. Bloomberg calculates that Bo and his wife combined hold about $ 136 million in their accounts. If the crimes they're being accused of turn out to be true, they do deserve a severe punishment, yes. Bo's immense wealth and the alleged means by which he acquired it, only confirms his and his wife's cruelty. And it wouldn't be a surprise if they've indeed conspired to eliminate a rival, even if it's a foreign businessman.
But let's not fool ourselves. This is only the surface of this scandal. There's much more lurking beneath. For instance still no official charges are pressed against Bo in court but he's already in prison. Why? Wang Lijun is nowhere to be found since he left the US consulate. Rumors are that he'll be charged for treason. Now, there's no doubt Xilai and his wife are very corrupt because most Chinese politicians by definition are corrupt, it's just that the system is designed that way. But charges of murder? That's different. You need hard evidence. First, it's unclear how the prosecutor is going to prove it - the body was cremated. And despite all rumors nothing is known as hard truth. It's a very closed and secretive system (something untypical for such a large economy) that's being run in a very strange way that makes it look like a mafia clan. But that's all we can say, nothing more specific. Unless people in Chongqing finally untie their tongues and start testifying.
Bo Xilai's rivals, including the president Hu Jintao and the PM Wen Jiabao, are suddenly demonstrating unexpected firmness in their determination toruin his career crack down on corruption. And there's a host of reasons for that. There were many who hated him. They hated his ambition and his populism. Because his mother was a victim of Mao's cultural revolution, the fact that Bo always praised her and even resurrected her memory in Chongqing was seen as an example how far his lust for power could get. A NYT report claims that as part of his control over Chongqing, Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun were wiretapping all the top politicians who visited the city. Including the president himself! When Hu Jintao found that he had been spied on, this put the final drop on his patience. Bo had gone too far.
Also, apparently it was hard to forgive stirring such a scandal in a year when the Chinese communists are looking desperate to tread around quietly as if they're made of glass. After all, the long awaited change of leadership in the Party is expected to happen on the party congress in October. That kind of stuff happens only once in a decade and it was supposed to go without too much noise. Once the scandal broke, for the first week the Party was completely silent on the case, obviously looking for the best way to react to a crisis of this magnitude. Then rumors surfaced on the blogging platform Weibo about shootings and blockades on the Baijing streets, but those were soon debunked and removed from the website...
All that said, it's pretty obvious that no Chinese politician, regardless of the faction they belong to, could continue supporting Bo Xilai any more. Because that would put the very legitimacy of the Party in jeopardy. The stakes are just too high. And this generation of politicians, the so called "Tiananmen generation", tend to avoid social crises at any cost, because of the bad memories from those events. So it's unlikely that he'll get any support from anybody. He's a political corpse.
That's why they'll try very hard to stop all the noise around Xilai's downfall, because if it continues for too long, some uncomfortable questions about the system could start popping up, and the focus could shift into a dangerous direction. For instance: if he has hundreds of millions, how many millions do the other people from the ruling elite have? Eh? That's kind of interesting, isn't it? Well, Bloomberg recently calculated that the top 70 wealthiest members of the Chinese parliament have a combined wealth of $ 90 billion. That's BILLION. It's roughly 12 times the combined wealth of the 600+ top bureaucrats in the US (Congress and Government), how about that! We're still talking about the biggest communist regime in the world, aren't we? And if the Chongqing model hadn't caused any suspicion until now, why should that mean that other, bigger and wealthier provinces, are not hiding even more sinister secrets? Imagine what a huge rabbit could pop out of that big hat!
The ruling elite in China is having a real problem selling their story about what went wrong and why. The people are not that stupid any more, and neither do they lack access to information, no matter how hard it's being filtered. You just can't dam a whole waterfall. The elite will try to distance themselves from Bo Xilai and his wife, and draw the line between those two and the other party officials, and try to convince the public that this case is a weird exception, an isolated case, nothing to see here, move along. Whether they'll succeed in this before the big party congress is doubtful. They want to demonstrate that this is a separate case and it has no bearing on the Party's ruling capacity. But they can't run away from the questions about rampant corruption, and the way the people see this Party. This will remind people that we're not talking of a perfect, smoothly working system but a cranky neo-Leninist system. And that's a bad face to show to the world, especially to the international investors.
This scandal has both a positive and a negative side for China. On one side, it reminds everybody (including Wen Jiabao's overly hospitable European hosts) that we're talking of a system that's far from transparent, predictable or even stable. It's the same system from 30 years ago - a system of strong people, of the cliques around them, and mutual attacks between them not because of differences on policy, but because of personal rivalries and grudges.
On the other side, the scandal with Bo Xilai could be good news, because it exposes the weaknesses of the system that allow a person like Bo to reach the very tops of power. Now his downfall could help the rulers, the intellectuals and the Chinese society as a whole, to achieve something like a consensus that could lead to a bolder and real political reform. Or call it wishful thinking if you like.
The Party's first reactions reminded me of some reflexes it has developed from 20 years ago - silence, media blackout and attempts to cleanse the Internet from any references and comments on the issue. But China of today is not the China of yesterday. According to Data Center of China Internet, in 2013 more Chinese people will be buying smartphones than ordinary telephones. Silence is not an option any more, because it fuels distrust in authority even more. And in this atmosphere, any fireworks might appear to sound like shootings, and the downfall of a party leader may look like the downfall of an entire system. Because, in a way, it really is.
In the art of hospitality it's considered bad taste to ask your guest about their problems. It's the same in the art of diplomacy, especially if your guest has a thick wallet. So while the Chinese PM Wen Jiabao was touring Europe, no one asked him about the biggest scandal in China in recent times. In Germany and Sweden, Wen talked about investments and future partnerships, in Poland he met with the political elite of Central and Eastern Europe, and in my home country Iceland he visited a local sheep farm. How cute.
Ironically, the crisis-ridden Europe looks far more hospitable for the Chinese leaders than any place in Beijing. There the echo of the fall of the former top party apparatchik Bo Xilai still resounds and causes ripples through the seemingly smooth surface of Chinese politics.
[Error: unknown template video]
The public disgrace of Bo Xilai and those around him is probably the most shaking event in the Chinese elite since 1989. It began when his most trusted aide deserted him, Wang Lijun the chief of the police in Chongqing. He fled to the US consulate (how familiar! are the US diplomatic missions in China turning into sanctuaries now?) Eventually Bo Xilai was first removed from the leadership of the province, then from Politburo, and then he and his wife were arrested for the mysterious murder of a British businessman.
It's not the first time a powerful figure has been removed from a top post in China. The Beijing mayor was fired in 1995, that of Shanghai in 2006, etc. But this case is different. Bo was a rising star, the leader of a province of 30 million people, his father was among the top circles of the CCP (from the Mao era) and most importantly, he had charisma and popularity that brought him the nickname "the Chinese JFK". Unlike most Chinese politicians, he loved the media and they loved him. His policies of fighting social disparity and organized crime in Chongqing were exemplary. So the sudden downfall of such a major figure requires something more than a mere headline in some obscure press agency. This all looks like a cheap telenovela, rather than a political story. But it's true.
In the last months more and more reports kept coming up, claiming that his success against organized crime had come at the expense of absolute disregard for any human rights, many innocent people being dragged out of their homes and tortured by the police and forced to confess on various crimes. Bloomberg calculates that Bo and his wife combined hold about $ 136 million in their accounts. If the crimes they're being accused of turn out to be true, they do deserve a severe punishment, yes. Bo's immense wealth and the alleged means by which he acquired it, only confirms his and his wife's cruelty. And it wouldn't be a surprise if they've indeed conspired to eliminate a rival, even if it's a foreign businessman.
But let's not fool ourselves. This is only the surface of this scandal. There's much more lurking beneath. For instance still no official charges are pressed against Bo in court but he's already in prison. Why? Wang Lijun is nowhere to be found since he left the US consulate. Rumors are that he'll be charged for treason. Now, there's no doubt Xilai and his wife are very corrupt because most Chinese politicians by definition are corrupt, it's just that the system is designed that way. But charges of murder? That's different. You need hard evidence. First, it's unclear how the prosecutor is going to prove it - the body was cremated. And despite all rumors nothing is known as hard truth. It's a very closed and secretive system (something untypical for such a large economy) that's being run in a very strange way that makes it look like a mafia clan. But that's all we can say, nothing more specific. Unless people in Chongqing finally untie their tongues and start testifying.
Bo Xilai's rivals, including the president Hu Jintao and the PM Wen Jiabao, are suddenly demonstrating unexpected firmness in their determination to
Also, apparently it was hard to forgive stirring such a scandal in a year when the Chinese communists are looking desperate to tread around quietly as if they're made of glass. After all, the long awaited change of leadership in the Party is expected to happen on the party congress in October. That kind of stuff happens only once in a decade and it was supposed to go without too much noise. Once the scandal broke, for the first week the Party was completely silent on the case, obviously looking for the best way to react to a crisis of this magnitude. Then rumors surfaced on the blogging platform Weibo about shootings and blockades on the Baijing streets, but those were soon debunked and removed from the website...
All that said, it's pretty obvious that no Chinese politician, regardless of the faction they belong to, could continue supporting Bo Xilai any more. Because that would put the very legitimacy of the Party in jeopardy. The stakes are just too high. And this generation of politicians, the so called "Tiananmen generation", tend to avoid social crises at any cost, because of the bad memories from those events. So it's unlikely that he'll get any support from anybody. He's a political corpse.
That's why they'll try very hard to stop all the noise around Xilai's downfall, because if it continues for too long, some uncomfortable questions about the system could start popping up, and the focus could shift into a dangerous direction. For instance: if he has hundreds of millions, how many millions do the other people from the ruling elite have? Eh? That's kind of interesting, isn't it? Well, Bloomberg recently calculated that the top 70 wealthiest members of the Chinese parliament have a combined wealth of $ 90 billion. That's BILLION. It's roughly 12 times the combined wealth of the 600+ top bureaucrats in the US (Congress and Government), how about that! We're still talking about the biggest communist regime in the world, aren't we? And if the Chongqing model hadn't caused any suspicion until now, why should that mean that other, bigger and wealthier provinces, are not hiding even more sinister secrets? Imagine what a huge rabbit could pop out of that big hat!
The ruling elite in China is having a real problem selling their story about what went wrong and why. The people are not that stupid any more, and neither do they lack access to information, no matter how hard it's being filtered. You just can't dam a whole waterfall. The elite will try to distance themselves from Bo Xilai and his wife, and draw the line between those two and the other party officials, and try to convince the public that this case is a weird exception, an isolated case, nothing to see here, move along. Whether they'll succeed in this before the big party congress is doubtful. They want to demonstrate that this is a separate case and it has no bearing on the Party's ruling capacity. But they can't run away from the questions about rampant corruption, and the way the people see this Party. This will remind people that we're not talking of a perfect, smoothly working system but a cranky neo-Leninist system. And that's a bad face to show to the world, especially to the international investors.
This scandal has both a positive and a negative side for China. On one side, it reminds everybody (including Wen Jiabao's overly hospitable European hosts) that we're talking of a system that's far from transparent, predictable or even stable. It's the same system from 30 years ago - a system of strong people, of the cliques around them, and mutual attacks between them not because of differences on policy, but because of personal rivalries and grudges.
On the other side, the scandal with Bo Xilai could be good news, because it exposes the weaknesses of the system that allow a person like Bo to reach the very tops of power. Now his downfall could help the rulers, the intellectuals and the Chinese society as a whole, to achieve something like a consensus that could lead to a bolder and real political reform. Or call it wishful thinking if you like.
The Party's first reactions reminded me of some reflexes it has developed from 20 years ago - silence, media blackout and attempts to cleanse the Internet from any references and comments on the issue. But China of today is not the China of yesterday. According to Data Center of China Internet, in 2013 more Chinese people will be buying smartphones than ordinary telephones. Silence is not an option any more, because it fuels distrust in authority even more. And in this atmosphere, any fireworks might appear to sound like shootings, and the downfall of a party leader may look like the downfall of an entire system. Because, in a way, it really is.
(no subject)
Date: 5/5/12 20:12 (UTC)Let's recall that no one expected the sudden collapse of the USSR. The Chinese comrades could draw a lesson or two from there.
These will be interesting times, and probably the real news from beyond the Chinese Wall are yet to come. It's gonna be the showtime of the century. May all of us be alive and well at the time so we can watch the show, cos I suspect it'll be spectacular. And this time we won't be players in it, for a change.
(no subject)
Date: 5/5/12 21:30 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/5/12 08:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/5/12 20:52 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 07:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 15:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 16:02 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 16:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 16:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 16:08 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 16:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 16:38 (UTC)Please elaborate.
(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 16:58 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 18:00 (UTC)Whatever weird definition you like to throw in, I guess.
(no subject)
Date: 8/5/12 15:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/5/12 08:32 (UTC)Whatever else ya wanna say about Obama, he signed the Local Community Radio Act (http://www.prometheusradio.org/node/2445) into law. That may well end up being a lot more important down the road than is immediately apparent, and it was worth having him in there for that alone; I doubt we could've gotten a signature on that even from Clinton/Gore, much less any of the alternatives.
(no subject)
Date: 6/5/12 11:23 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/5/12 04:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/5/12 08:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/5/12 20:49 (UTC)